Category Archives: Urban Design

Transportation-Development Symbiosis

Posted on 2012/03/31 by

The RPA’s Regional Assembly has included the following idea submission: expand reverse-commuter rail service. The proposal calls for surveying city residents to look for the main available reverse-commuter markets, and for expanding reverse-peak service on the model of Metro-North. It … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, Good Transit, New York, Providence, Regional Rail, Transportation, Urban Design, Urbanism | 36 Comments

Providence: The Quiet Revival

Posted on 2012/03/07 by

Rustwire’s recent article about Providence, and a less recent article on the Urbanophile, have made me think about Providence’s growth. The Urbanophile comes strongly on the side of the power of its coziness; Rustwire takes the opposite track, talking about … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, Providence, Urban Design, Urbanism | 7 Comments

Macrodestinations and Microdestinations

Posted on 2012/02/24 by

In her book Dark Age Ahead, Jane Jacobs complains that freeways as built are good at getting people to macrodestinations (downtown) but not microdestinations (particular addresses within city center). In her example from Toronto, this is correct, but in general, … Continue reading →

Posted in Cars, Development, Providence, Regional Rail, Transportation, Urban Design, Urban Transit, Urbanism | 29 Comments

Trip Chaining

Posted on 2012/02/20 by

Gendered Innovations’ charts of trip chaining and gender breakdown of public transit riders got me thinking about how different systems of transportation handle a mixture of short and long trips. Eric Jaffe at The Atlantic Cities reports this and suggests … Continue reading →

Posted in Cars, Development, Good Transit, Transportation, Urban Design, Urban Transit, Urbanism | 13 Comments

Different Kinds of Centralization (Hoisted from Comments)

Posted on 2011/11/23 by

As an addendum to my post about transit cities and centralization, let me explain that the term centralized city really means two different things. One is diffuse centralization throughout the core, typical of pedestrian cities and bus cities and of … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, Transportation, Urban Design, Urban Transit, Urbanism | 5 Comments

A Transit City is a Centralized City

Posted on 2011/11/21 by

In New York, a large fraction of employment clusters in a rectangle bounded roughly by 59th Street, 2nd Avenue, 42nd Street, and 9th Avenue. Although it’s a commonplace that New York employment is centralized around Manhattan, in reality most of … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, New York, Transportation, Urban Design, Urban Transit, Urbanism | 35 Comments

Cities and Multiple Equilibria

Posted on 2011/10/19 by

A growing idea among emergent urbanists is that there’s a natural form to the city, one that maximizes activity and that thrives in the absence of regulation. In this view, any sort of urban planning, from postwar suburbia to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Consensus, Politics and Society, Urban Design, Urbanism | 27 Comments

Aesthetics and Usability

Posted on 2011/10/04 by

New York is spending multiple billions of dollars on two signature projects in Lower Manhattan of which the more expensive (PATH terminal at $3.8 billion) has no transportation benefits and the less expensive (Fulton Street Transit Center at $1.4 billion) … Continue reading →

Posted in Incompetence, Transportation, Urban Design, Urbanism | 50 Comments

Pedestrian Observations from Central London

Posted on 2011/09/26 by

As I got off the Underground, I was greeted by a fenced roadway without easy crossings. I found the way around a roundabout and started to walk toward the hotel where I was to meet my family, on the wrong … Continue reading →

Posted in Pedestrian Observations, Urban Design, Urbanism | 33 Comments

Where Did You Grow Up?

Posted on 2011/08/05 by

The last few weeks’ posts on Old Urbanist made me think about what urban forms people prefer, and how it’s affected by what they are familiar with. Rather than speculate on what people in my social circle prefer, I yield … Continue reading →

Posted in Israel, New York, Personal/Admin, Urban Design, Urbanism | 34 Comments